Last Day of Vacation

Saturday was the day we had to go home. We packed up the car and drove to Pensacola to fix an area of neglect on my part. I lived in Pensacola for four years without ever going to the Naval Aviation Museum. It was time to fix my mistake. This was something I have been wanting to do for almost ten years -- wait a minute let me think,  I went to PCC as a freshman in the fall of 2000 and now it is 2011. Wow I'm old.
Sorry.
Anyway, we arrived at the museum right at lunch time, so we ate at the picnic benches outside the museum and went in. Admission is free for the museum, but the IMAX isn't. Since it was already after noon, we decided to skip the IMAX. But there was plenty to see in the rest of the museum.
Unfortunately the kids were pretty grumpy, especially Rebekah who wanted desperately to both run around as fast as she could, go to sleep, and just sit on the floor and cry. Elisabeth did her best to keep Rebekah happy, but overall it was a losing battle.
But we had a good time anyway. The museum was great. They had a section on how they got a lot of the old WWII planes from the bottom of Lake Michigan. During the War, the Navy needed a safe place to train pilots to land on aircraft carriers. They decided that the safest place was on Lake Michigan. Since this was the first place that pilots actually got to land on an aircraft carrier in the water, hundreds of planes crashed and sank to the bottom of the lake. The museum has been working on salvaging those airplanes and restoring them for display.

While walking around the museum, I started wondering where the Lockheed planes were. There seemed to be a lot of planes from Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and General Dynamics. But I didn't see any Lockheed planes. Now I must admit, the kids weren't exactly letting us read all the plaques that went with the airplanes. We were mostly trying to keep them from running over little old ladies and not bump into any of the equipment. But still, I thought we should see at least something by Lockheed. Finally, we came upon the display of the Lockheed L-10 Electra flown by that famed aviator: Amelia Earhart. The display reads:

Famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan flew the most famous L-10 Electra produced on their attempted around-the-world flight in 1937. The aircraft disappeared during a leg of the flight between Lae, New Guinea, and Howland Island Its fate and that of the crew one of history's enduring unsolved mysteries.
Navy ships, including the aircraft carrier Lexington (CV 2) spent weeks searching wide expances of the Pacific for Earhart and Noonan.

Seeing the restored aircraft was neat, but the highlight of the trip was the display of four A-4 Skyhawk planes, painted in that beautiful blue that can only mean the Blue Angels. The best display by far was the four retired Blue Angels. Looking straight at a platform with a huge American flag in the background. It is an absolutely grand site and a great place for making a important speech. I stood up there and felt like I should be addressing the nation.

The museum also had a lot of other exhibits. They had a quilting exhibit that Stacy really enjoyed, they had a small space section, a recreation of a forties style small town road and house. We did miss seeing the IMAX, and the simulators, but I guess that gives us a reason to visit it again.

My one disappointment was that they didn't have more Blue Angels displays. There have been nine different planes that have donned the blue paint and flown for millions of people around this great country, it would have been great to have a display showing the planes through the years. The A-4 display was absolutely fantastic, but it would have been great to see the F-4 Phantom, the F-11 Tiger, and even some of the older planes.

All in all it was a fun time, and a great end to an enjoyable vacation.